Ronaldo is currently the second most expensive professional football player of all time, after moving from Manchester United to Real Madrid for approximately £80m. At his presentation as a Real Madrid player, 80,000 people greeted him at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. This is the world record, passing the 25-year record of 75,000 people at Diego Maradona's presentation for Napoli.

In the 2007/08 season, he became the only player in the last 25 years to win both the "FIFA World Player of the Year" and the "Young Player of the Year" awards in the same season. In that season, he scored a total of 42 goals and won the European Golden Boot, an award which is given to the top scorer of league matches of every European national league.

Ronaldo's father, José Aveiro, died of an alcohol-related liver disease at age 52 in September 2005 when Ronaldo was 20. Ronaldo said that he does not drink alcohol.

Ronaldo became a father on 17 June 2010 following the birth of his son, named Cristiano. He was born in the United States through an American surrogate, and Ronaldo announced that he had full custody. Ronaldo has never publicly revealed information about his son's mother, but he says he will reveal it to Cristiano Jr. when he gets older. Ronaldo was in a relationship with Russian model Irina Shayk from 2010–2015[6]. In June 2017, Ronaldo confirmed on Facebook that he had become the father to twins, Mateo and Eva[7]. In November 2017, his girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez gave birth to their first daughter, Alana.[8]

He opened his first fashion boutique under the name "CR7" (his initials and shirt number) on his native-born island of Madeira, Portugal in 2006. In December 2013, Ronaldo opened a museum called Museu CR7, which has all of his trophies from his career.[9]

A film about his life and career, titled Ronaldo, was released worldwide on 9 November 2015.[10]